Reflections
by RowenaR
Summary: Just a small vignette about how Coreena feels after some days of recovery in sickbay. Kind of a companion piece to “You can still be free”. No standalone, sorry, recommended reading “XWing: Odyssey” first.


_**Reflections**_

**Title:** Reflections

**Summary:** Just a small vignette about how Coreena feels after some days of recovery in sick-bay. Kind of a companion piece to "You can still be free". No stand-alone, sorry, recommended reading "X-Wing: Odyssey" first.

**Rating: **M due to dark and mature themes.

**Disclaimer:** All characters mentioned are children of my imagination but they live in the universe George Lucas created so… I guess I owe him some space in my disclaimer, too. The song the story was named after belongs to Christina Aguilera (or whoever wrote it), and belongs to the OST of "Mulan", but I thought it quite fitting. I don't intend to make money using the lyrics without official permission.

**A/N:** „You can still be free" had been lying around on my hard-drive for quite some time now, and since I had two pieces for each Marten and Saron I thought it would be fitting to do the same with Marcus and Coreena. So here we go.

**Reflections**

_Look at me  
You may think you see  
Who I really am  
But you'll never know me  
Every day  
It's as if I play a part  
Now I see  
If I wear a mask  
I can fool the world  
But I cannot fool my heart_

_Who is that girl I see  
Staring straight back at me?  
When will my reflection show  
Who I am inside?_

_I am now  
In a world where I  
Have to hide my heart  
And what I believe in  
But somehow  
I will show the world  
What's inside my heart  
And be loved for who I am_

_Who is that girl I see  
Staring straight back at me?  
Why is my reflection  
Someone I don't know?  
Must I pretend that I'm  
Someone else for all time?  
When will my reflection show  
Who I am inside?_

_There's a heart that must be  
Free to fly  
That burns with a need to know  
The reason why_

_Why must we all conceal  
What we think, how we feel?  
Must there be a secret me  
I'm forced to hide?  
I won't pretend that I'm  
Someone else for all time  
When will my reflection show  
Who I am inside?  
When will my reflection show  
Who I am inside?_

* * *

Who am I? Who am I after all that happened? They tell me that I'm Captain Coreena Mallan, commander of an X-Wing squadron, 23 standard years old, citizen of Alderaan, daughter of the late Nunavut Mallan. But I… I just feel like an empty shell. I look at my hands, and I see the hands of another woman. When I see my eyes in the reflection of the window before me I see nothing but emptiness.

They are the eyes of a woman that has lost everything. I lost my home planet, I lost my mother, I lost my hair, I lost my dignity. And I lost Marcus. The only one that mattered in the end, the only one who kept me sane. With what I'm now, he wouldn't want me anyway. A body almost completely destroyed and built up again, most likely unable to ever conceive children again, and a soul that almost isn't there anymore. When I first saw him, or merely got a glimpse of him when being wheeled into sick-bay, for a moment I had the feeling everything would be good in the end.

But then the thought of embracing him came to me, and all inside me rebelled. I was so sick, I would have thrown up right on the hands of the nurse that was prepping me for surgery if I had had any energy left to do anything more than breathing. That's when I realized that I lost him. If I wouldn't be able to touch him ever again, what use is it then burdening him with me, screw up that I am? He doesn't deserve me, he deserves someone he can love properly.

Suddenly I turn and look blankly at the observation window with its mirrored-glass, only starring at my own reflection. Someone is standing behind it and staring at me, I just can feel it. A flash of an unbearably deep and sad feeling hits me, and it's not coming from me. I can feel its familiar warmth, and suddenly I know who is standing behind the window. Marcus.

I just can't bear the thought of him standing behind the window and seeing my empty eyes and feeling _this_ for me, and I turn around again, gazing out into space again. I steel feel strangely detached from everything, but a tiny part of me hurts for Marcus and feels terrible for making him ache like this. The hurt and the shame and the disgust at myself are almost everything that make out what I am now. I wish… I wish I wasn't here anymore, making Marcus hurt, occupying space for someone needing medical attention more than me, presenting a perfect opportunity for _Liberty_'s shrinks to play around with their PSDO-techniques and all this stuff… My glance falls on the room again. No sharp object around here, no medications. They were right to rate me suicidal, and they did everything needed to stop me from it. Someone told me, the _Predator_ wasn't destroyed since we had to withdraw as soon as the shuttle piloted by Kardian had landed in the shuttle bay, and maybe they told me on purpose.

It was a clever move because it hit right home. Killing myself now would mean the ultimate victory for him but with me being alive he would always have to worry about me coming back some time. And so I will go on, screwed-up and defective as I am, as if only to hope to outlive Chesfer. And to avoid causing Marcus even more grief. I will wear a mask from now on, concealing my broken mind from all your probing and prying, and my damaged body from your hands and your eyes.

But someday… perhaps someday I will be healed enough to cast off the mask again, and see myself in the reflections again.


End file.
